Chapter III: Part 3

Stout and stalwart forms surrounded me, wielding their iron bars, pickaxes, and ropes. Their efforts were strenuous but unavailing. The tide soon returned in its strength, and drove us, baffled, from the spot before we had been able to grasp or shake the ponderous mass. It was calculated by competent judges that its weight was full fifteen tons: neither could there be a more graphic image of the resistless strength of the wrathful sea than the aspect of this and similar blocks of rifted stone, that were raised and rolled perpetually, by the power of the billows, and hurled, as in some pastime of the giants, along the shuddering shore! Deep and bitter was the grief of the sailor at our failure and retreat. His piteous wail over the dead recalled the agony of those who are recorded in Holy Writ, they who grieved for their lost ones, “and would not be comforted because they were not!” That night an inspiration visited me in my wakeful bed. At a neighbouring harbour[53] dwelt a relative[54] of mine, who was an engineer, in charge of the machinery on a breakwater and canal. To him at morning light I sent an appeal for succour, and he immediately responded with aidance and advice. Two strong windlasses, worked by iron chains, and three or four skilful men, were sent up by him next day with instructions for their work. Again at evening ebb we were all on the spot. One of our new assistants, a very Tubal-Cain in aspect and stature, and of the same craft with that smith before the Flood, plunged upon the rock as the water reluctantly revealed its upper side, and drilled a couple of holes in the surface with rapid energy, to receive, each of them, that which he called a Lewis-wedge and a ring. To these the chains of the windlasses were fastened on. They then looped a rope around the ankle of the corpse and gave it as the post of honour to me to hold. It was on the evening of Sunday that all this was done, and I had deemed it a venial breach of discipline to omit the nightly service of the Church in order to suit the tide. A Puseyite bishop might have condemned my breach of Rubric and Ritual, but I exercise episcopal authority in my own parish, and accordingly I absolved myself. Forty strong parishioners, all absentees from evening prayer, manned the double windlass power; I intoned the pull; and by a strong and blended effort the rocky mass was slowly, silently, and gently upheaved: a slight haul at the rope, and up to our startled view, and to the sudden lights, came forth the altered, ghastly, flattened semblance of a man! “My brother! my brother!” shrieked a well-known voice at my side, and tears of gratitude and suffering gushed in mingled torrent over his rugged cheek. A coffin had been made ready, under the hope of final success, and therein we reverently laid the poor disfigured carcass of one who a little while before had been the young and joyous inmate of a fond and happy home. We had to clamber up a steep and difficult pathway along the cliff with the body, which was carried by the bearers in a kind of funeral train. The vicar of course led the way. When we were about halfway up a singular and striking event occurred, which moved us all exceedingly. Unobserved--for all were intent on their solemn task--a vessel had neared the shore; she lay to, and, as it seemed, had watched us with night-glasses from the deck, or had discerned us from the torches and lanterns in our hands. For all at once there sounded along the air three deep and thrilling cheers! And we could see that the crew on board had manned their yards. It was manifest that their loyal and hearty voices and gestures were intended to greet and gratulate our fulfilment of duty to a brother mariner’s remains. The burial-place of the dead sailors in this churchyard is a fair and fitting scene for their quiet rest. Full in view and audible in sound for ever rolls the sea. Is it not to them a soothing requiem that

“Old Ocean, with its everlasting voice,
As in perpetual Jubilee proclaims
The praises of the Almighty”?

Trees stand, like warders, beside their graves; and the Saxon and shingled church, “the mother of us all,” dwells in silence by, to watch and wail over her safe and slumbering dead. It recalls the imagery of the Holy Book wherein we read of the gathered relics of the ancient slain: “And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it for her upon the rock from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.” In such a shelter we laid our brother at rest, rescued from the unhallowed sepulture of the rock; and there the faithful voice of the mourner breathed a last farewell. “Good-bye,” he said, “good-bye! Safe and quiet in the ground!”

A year had passed away when the return of the equinox admonished us again to listen for storms and wrecks. There are men in this district whose usage it is at every outbreak of a gale of wind to watch and ward the cliffs from rise to set of sun. Of these my quaint old parishioner, Peter Burrow, was one. On a wild and dreary winter day I found myself seated on a rock with Peter standing by, at a point that overhung the sea. We were both gazing with anxious dismay at a ship which was beating to and fro in the Channel, and had now drifted much too near to the surges and the shore. She had come into sight some hours before struggling with Harty Race, the local name of a narrow and boisterous run of sea between Lundy and the land, and she was now within three or four miles of our rocks. “Ah, sir,” said Peter, “the coastmen say,

“‘From Padstow Point to Lundy Light,
Is a watery grave, by day or night.’

And I think the poor fellows off there will find it so.” All at once, as we still watched the vessel labouring on the sea, a boat was launched over her side, and several men plunged into it one by one. With strained and anxious eyes we searched the billows for the course of the boat. Sometimes we caught a glimpse as it rode upon some surging wave; then it disappeared a while, and no trace was visible for long. At last we could see it no more. Meanwhile the vessel held down Channel, tacked and steered as if still beneath the guidance of some of her crew, although it must have been in sheer desperation that they still hugged the shore. What was to be done? If she struck, the men still on board must perish without help, for nightfall drew on; if the boat reappeared, Peter could make a signal where to land. In hot haste, then, I made for the vicarage, ordered my horse, and returned towards the cliffs. The ship rode on, and I accompanied her way along the shore. She reached the offing of a neighbouring haven, and there grounded on the sand. No boatman could be induced to put off, and thick darkness soon after fell. I returned worn, heart-sick, and weary on my homeward way; there strange tidings greeted me,--the boat which we had watched so long had been rolled ashore by the billows empty. Peter Burrow had hauled her above high-water mark, and had found a name, “_The Alonzo_, of Stockton-on-Tees,” on her stern. That night I wrote as usual to the owner, with news of the wreck, and the next day we were able to guess at the misfortunes of the stranded ship: a boat had visited the vessel, and found her freighted with iron from Gloucester for a Queen’s yard round the Land’s End. Her papers in the cabin showed that her crew of nine men had been reported all sound and well three days before. The owner’s agent arrived, and he stated that her captain was a brave and trusty officer, and that he must have been compelled by his men to join them when they deserted the ship. They must all have been swamped and lost not long after the launch of the boat, and while we watched for them in vain amid the waves. Then ensued what has long been with me the saddest and most painful duty of the shore: we sought and waited for the dead. Now there is a folk-lore of the beach that no corpse will float or be found until the ninth day after death. The truth is, that about that time the body proceeds to decompose, and as a natural result it ascends to the surface of the current, is brought into the shallows of the tide, and is there found. The owner’s representative was my guest for ten days, and with the help of the ship’s papers and his own personal knowledge we were able to identify the dead. First of all the body of the captain came in; he was a fine, stalwart, and resolute-looking man. His countenance, however, had a grim and angry aspect, and his features wore somewhat of a fierce and reproachful look--just such an expression as would verify the truth of our suspicion that he had been driven by the violence of others to forsake his deck. The face of the dead man was as graphic a record of his living character as a physiognomist could portray. Then arrived the mate and three other men of the crew. None were placid of feature or calm and pleasant in look, as those usually are who are accidentally drowned or who die in their beds. But many of them had _that_ awful expression of countenance which reminded me of a picture once described to me as the result of an experiment by certain artists in France. It was during the Revolution, and amid the anarchy of those times, that they bought a criminal who had been condemned to die, fastened him to a cross, and painted him for a crucifixion; but his face wore the aspect, not of the patient suffering which they intended to portray, but a strong expression of _reluctant agony_. Such has been the look that I myself have witnessed in many a poor disfigured corpse. The death-struggle of the conscious victim in the strong and cruel grasp of the remorseless sea was depicted in harsh and vivid lines on the brow of the dead.

But one day my strange old man, Peter Burrow, came to me in triumphant haste with the loud greeting, “Sir, we have got a noble corpse down on your beach! We have just laid him down above high-water mark, and he is as comely a body as a man shall see!” I made haste to the spot, and there lay, with the light of a calm and wintry day falling on his manly form, a fine and stately example of a man: he was six feet two inches in height, of firm and accurate proportion throughout; and he must have been, indeed, in life a shape of noble symmetry and grace. On his broad smooth chest was tattooed a rood--that is to say, in artist phrase, our blessed Saviour on His cross, with, on the one hand, His mother, and on the other St. John the evangelist: underneath were the initial letters of a name, “P. B.” His arms also were marked with tracery in the same blue lines. On his right arm was engraved “P. B.” again, and “E. M.,” the letters linked with a wreath; and on his left arm was an anchor, as I imagined the symbol of hope, and the small blue forget-me-not flower. The greater number of my dead sailors--and I have myself said the burial service over forty-two such men rescued from the sea--were so decorated with some distinctive emblem and name; and it is their object and intent, when they assume these pictured signs, to secure identity for their bodies if their lives are lost at sea, and then, for the solace of their friends, should they be cast on the shore and taken up for burial in the earth. What a volume of heroism and resignation to a mournful probability in this calm foresight and deliberate choice, to wear always on their living flesh, as it were, the signature of a sepulchral name! The symbolic figures and the letters which were supposed to designate our dead were all faithfully transcribed and duly entered in the vicar’s book. We carried the strangely decorated man to his comrades of the deck; and gradually, in the course of one month, we discovered and carefully buried the total crew of nine strong men. These gathered strangers, the united assemblage from many a distant and diverse abode, now calmly slept among our rural and homely graves, the stout seamen of the ship _Alonzo_, of Stockton-on-Tees! The boat which had foundered with them we brought also to the churchyard, and there, just by their place of rest, we placed her beside them, keel upward to the sky, in token that her work, too, was over and her voyage done. There her timbers slowly moulder still, and by-and-by her dust will mingle in the scenery of death with the ashes of those living hearts and hands that manned her, in their last unavailing launch and fruitless struggle for the mastery of life! But the history of the _Alonzo_ is not yet closed. Three years afterwards a letter arrived from the Danish consul at a neighbouring seaport town, addressed to myself as the vicar of the parish; and the hope of the writer was that he might be able to ascertain through myself, for two anxious and grieving parents in Denmark, tidings of their lost son. His name, he said, was Philip Bengstein, and it was in the correspondence that this strange and touching history transpired. The father, who immediately afterward wrote to my address, told me in tearful words, that his son, bearing that name, had gone away from his native home because his parents had resisted a marriage which he was desirous to contract. They found that he had gone to sea before the mast, a position much below his station in life; and they had traced him from ship to ship, until at last they found him on the papers of the _Alonzo_, of Stockton-on-Tees. Then their inquiry as to the fate of that vessel had led them to the knowledge through the owners that the vicar of a parish on the seaboard of North Cornwall could in all likelihood convey to them some tidings of their long-lost son. I related in reply the history of the death, discovery, and burial of the unfortunate young man. I was enabled to verify and to understand the initial letters of his own name, and of her who was not to become his bride--although she still clung to his memory in loving loneliness in that foreign land! Ample evidence, therefore, verified his corpse, and I was proudly enabled to certify to his parents the reverent burial of their child. A letter is treasured among my papers filled to overflowing with the strong and earnest gratitude of a stranger and a Dane for the kindness we had rendered to one who loved “not wisely,” perchance, “but too well,” to that son who had been lost and was found too late: one, too, “whose course of true love” had brought him from distant Denmark to a green hillock among the dead, beneath a lonely tower among the trees, by the Cornish sea! What a picture was that which we saw painted upon the bosom and the limbs of a dead man, of fond and faithful love, of severed and broken hearts, of disappointed hope, of a vacant chair and a hushed voice in a far-away Danish home! Linked with such themes as these which I have related in this Remembrance are the subjoined verses, which were written on a rock by the shore.

THE STORM

War! ’mid the ocean and the land!
The battle-field Morwenna’s strand,
Where rock and ridge the bulwark keep,
The giant warders of the deep!

They come! and shall they not prevail,
The seething surge, the gathering gale?
They fling their wild flag to the breeze,
The banner of a thousand seas!

They come, they mount, they charge in vain,
Thus far, incalculable main!
No more! thine hosts have not o’erthrown
The lichen on the barrier stone!

Have the rocks faith, that thus they stand
Unmoved, a grim and stately band,
And look, like warriors tried and brave,
Stern, silent, reckless, o’er the wave?

Have the proud billows thought and life
To feel the glory of the strife,
And trust one day, in battle bold,
To win the foeman’s haughty hold?

Mark, where they writhe with pride and shame,
Fierce valour, and the zeal of fame;
Hear how their din of madness raves,
The baffled army of the waves!

Thy way, O God! is in the sea;
Thy paths where awful waters be:
Thy Spirit thrills the conscious stone;
O Lord! Thy footsteps are not known.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] From _All the Year Round_, vol. xiii. pp. 153-156. 1865.

[42] 1834.

[43] The Tamar.

[44] The Torridge.

[45] John Wesley.

[46] And like Daniel Gumb. See p. 107.

[47] _Vide_ p. 32, _et seq._

[48] See the essay, “Cruel Coppinger,” and Appendix F.

[49] These are still preserved. They are little sand-glasses, shielded with brass, cylindrical in shape. The sand in one takes twenty-eight seconds to run, that in the other fourteen.

[50] Hawker is not forgotten in Arbroath. A lecture was delivered there on February 18, 1903, by the Rev. A. E. Crowder, on “Cornwall: its Scenery, People, Antiquities, and Folklore.” The lecturer referred to Hawker and the wreck of the _Caledonia_.

[51] For Hawker’s poem on this occasion, see p. 22.

[52] “Gebir,” Book I., lines 216, 217. The usual version has “_hard_ wet sand.” Hawker and Landor (it may be remarked by the way) were in many respects kindred spirits.

[53] Bude.

[54] Probably Mr. George Casebourne, Civil Engineer, who married a sister of Mr. Hawker’s, and was for some years superintendent of the Bude Canal.

BLACK JOHN[55]

_From a picture formerly belonging to R. S. Hawker, now in the possession of Mrs. Calmady_]

A picture hangs in my library--and it is one of my most treasured relics of old Cornwall--the full-length and “counterfeit presentment,” in oil, of a quaint and singular dwarf. It exhibits a squat figure, uncouth and original, just such a one as Frederick Taylor would delight to introduce in one of his out-of-door pieces of Elizabethan days, as an appendage to the rural lady’s state when she rode afield with her hawk on her wrist. His height is under four feet, hump-backed and misshapen; his head, with tangled elfy hair falling wildly on his shoulders, droops upon his chest. Negro features and a dark skin surround a loose and flabby mouth, which teeth have long ceased to harmonise and fill out. He is clad in a loose antique russet gaberdine, the fashion of a past century: one hand leans on a gnarled staff, and the other holds a wide-brimmed felt hat, with humble gesture and look, as though his master stood by.

The traditionary name of this well-remembered character on the Tamar-side is Black John. He lived from the commencement to the middle of the eighteenth century in the household of an honoured name, Arscott of Tetcott,[56] an ancestor of one of the distinguished families of Cornwall; and as his master was wellnigh the last of the jovial open-housed squires of the West of England, so was Black John the last of the jesters or makers of mirth. When the feast was over, and the “wrath of hunger”[57] had been assuaged, while the hare’s or fox’s head, the festive drinking-cup of silver, went round with the nectar of the Georgian era, “strong punch for strong heads,” the jester was called in to contribute by merry antic and jocose saying to the loud enjoyment of the guests. Such were the functions sustained by my pictured and storied dwarf, and many an anecdote still survives around us in hearth and hall of the feats and stories of the “Tetcott merry-man.” Two of his usual after-dinner achievements were better suited to the rude jollity and coarse mirth of our forefathers than to the refinements of our own time; although they are said to exist here and there, among the “underground men” and miners of Western Cornwall, even to this day. These were “sparrow-mumbling” and swallowing living mice, which were tethered to a string to ensure their safe return to light and life. In the first of these accomplishments, a sparrow, alive, was fastened to the teeth of the artist with a cord, and he was expected to mumble off the feathers from the fluttering and astonished bird, with his lips alone, until he was plucked quite bare without the assistance or touch of finger or hand. A couple of projecting tusks or fangs, such as are called by the Italians Bourbon teeth, were of singular value as sparrow-holders to Black John; but these were one day drawn by violence from his mouth by an exasperated blacksmith, whose kitten had been slain, and who had been persuaded by a wretch, who was himself the actual assassin, that it was the jester who had guillotined the poor creature with his formidable jaws. The passage of the mouse was accomplished very often, amid roars of rude applause, down and up the gullet of the dwarf.

A tale is told of him, that one day, after he had for some time amused the guests, and had drank his full share of the ale, he fell, or seemed to fall, asleep. On a sudden he started up with a loud and terrified cry. Questioned as to the cause of his alarm, he answered, “O sir,” to his master, “I was in a sog [sleep], and I had such a dreadful dream! I thought I was dead, and I went where the wicked people go!”

“Ha, John,” said Arscott of Tetcott, in his grim voice, wide awake for a jest or a tale, “then tell us all about what you heard and saw.”

“Well, master, nothing particular.”

“Indeed, John!”

“No, sir; things was going on just as they do upon airth--here in Tetcott Hall--the gentlefolks nearest the fire.”

His master’s house was surrounded with all kinds of tame animals and birds so bold and confiding, from long safety and intercourse, that the rooks would come down at a call and pick up food like pigeons at the very feet of a man. Among the familiar creatures of the Hall were two enormous toads: these were especial favourites with Mr. Arscott, who was a very Chinese in his fondness for the bat and the toad, and who used to feed them very often with his own hands. One morning the family were aroused by sounds near the porch, of battle and fight. A guest from a distant town, who had arrived the night before on a visit, was discovered prone upon the grass, and over him stood as conqueror Black John, belabouring him with his staff. His story was, when rescued and set upon his feet, that on going out to breathe the morning air he had encountered and slain a fierce and venomous reptile--a big bloated creature that came towards him with open mouth. It turned out to be one of the enormous toads, an old and especial pet of master and man, who had heard a sound of feet, and came as usual to be fed, and was ruthlessly put to death; not, however, unavenged, for a wild man of the woods (so the townsman averred) had rushed upon him and knocked him down. When Mr. Arscott had heard the story, he turned on his heel, and never greeted his guest[58] with one farewell word. Black John sobbed and muttered vengeance in his den for many a day for the death of “Old Dawty”--the household name of the toad.

“The good old Squire! once more along the glen,
Oh, for the scenes of old! the former men!”

_R. S. Hawker_

_From the picture by F. Northcote, R.A._
]

Black John’s lair was a rude hut, which he had wattled for a snug abode, close to the kennel. He loved to retire to it, and sleep near his chosen companions, the hounds. When they were unkennelled, he accompanied and ran with them afoot, and so sinewy and so swift was his stunted form that he was very often in their midst at the death. Then, with the brush of the fox elaborately disposed as the crest of his felt hat, John would make his appearance on the following Sunday at church, where it was displayed, and pompously hung up above his accustomed seat, to his own great delight and the envy of many among the congregation. When the pack found the fox, and the huntsman’s ear was gladdened by their shrill and sudden burst into full cry, Black John’s shout would be heard in the field, with his standing jest, “There they go! there they go! like our missus at home in one of her storms!” As he grew older, and less equal to the exertion of his strong and youthful days, John took to wandering, gipsy-fashion, about the country-side; and he found food and welcome at every cottage and farmhouse. His usual couch was among the reeds or fern of some sheltering brake or wood, and he slept, as he himself used to express it, “rolled up, as warm as a hedgeboar, round his own nose.” One day, in bitter snowy weather, he was found wanting from his accustomed haunts--“one morn they missed him on the usual hill”--and after long search he was discovered shrouded in snow, cold, stiffened, and to all outward appearance dead. He was carried home, and in due course was coffined and borne towards the grave. But there, just as the clergyman[59] who read the service had reached the solemn words which commit the body to the ground, a loud thumping noise was heard within the coffin. The bystanders rent open the lid in hot haste, and up started Black John alive, in amazement, and in furious wrath. He had been in a long _deliquium_, or death-trance,[60] from cold, and had been restored to life by the motion and warmth of his own funeral ride. As he told the astonished mourners, “He heard the words ‘dust to dust,’ and then,” said he, “I thought it was high time to bumpy.” His words passed into a proverb; and to this very day, when Cornish men in these parts are placed in some sudden extremity, and it becomes necessary to take strong and immediate measures for extrication, the saying is, “It is time to bumpy, as Black John said.” In his anger and mental confusion, Black John ever after attributed his attempted burial to the conspiracy and ill-will of the clergyman, whose words he had interrupted by his sudden resurrection. More than once the reverend gentleman was suddenly assaulted in his walks by a stone hurled at him from a hedge, followed by an angry outcry, in a well-known voice, of “Ha! old Dust-to-dust; here I be, alive and kicking!”

It may be easily believed that Black John was a very refractory subject for clerical interference and admonition. The result of frequent clerical attempts to reform his habits, was a rooted dislike on his part of the black coat and white neckcloth in all its shades and denominations. The visit of the first field-preacher to the precincts of the Hall was signalised by an exhibition of this feeling. John waylaid the poor unsuspecting man, and offered to guide him on his road by a short cut across the park, which, John alleged, would save him a “considerable bit of way.” The treacherous guide led him along a narrow path into a paddock, wherein was shut up for safety Mr. Arscott’s perilous favourite bull. This animal had grown up from calf-hood the wanton but docile companion of Black John, whose wonderful skill in taming all manner of wild animals had made the “sire of the herd” so familiar with his strange warder, that he would follow him and obey his signals and voice like a dog. What took place between the bull and the preacher could only be guessed at.[61] A rush was heard by a passer-by, and a yell; then the rustling of the branches of a tree, and finally a dead thud upon the grass. From the paddock gate some little time after emerged Black John with a fragment of a white cravat in his hand, and this was all, so he steadfastly averred, that ever he could find of “the preacher’s body.” Actually, it was the sole relic of his arrival and existence that survived in those wild parts. He was never heard of more in that region. And although there were rural sceptics who doubted that the bull could have made such quick work of a full-grown man, the story was fearful enough to scare away all wandering preachers from that district while the dwarf lived. On the Sunday following the terrific interview between the preacher and the bull, John took his usual place in church, but, to the astonishment of those who were not in the secret, instead of the usual fox’s brush, a jaunty pennon of white rag floated as the crest of the well-known felt hat.

Black John was long and fondly cherished by his generous master. Mr. Arscott lived like Adam in the garden, surrounded by his animals and pets, each with its familiar and household name; and no man ever more fully realised the truth of the saying that “love makes love,” and that the surest way to kindle kindness is to be kind. Accurately has it been said of him--

“Oh, for the Squire! that shook at break of morn
Dew from the trees with echo of his horn!
The gathering scene, where Arscott’s lightest word
Went, like a trumpet, to the hearts that heard;
The dogs, that knew the meaning of his voice,
From the grim foxhound to my lady’s choice:
The steed that waited till his hand caressed:
And old Black John that gave and bare the jest!”[62]

None, high or low, during the lifetime of the squire, were allowed with impunity to injure or harass his cross-grained jester, and many a mischievous escapade was hushed up, and the sufferer soothed or pacified by money or influence. When gout and old age had imprisoned Mr. Arscott in his easy-chair, Black John snoozed among the ashes of the vast wood fires of the hearth, or lay coiled upon his rug like some faithful mastiff, watching every look and gesture of his master; starting up to fill the pipe or the tankard of old ale, and then crouching again.

“This lasted long; it fain would last
Till autumn rustled on the blast,”[63]

and the good old squire, in the language of the Tamar-side, “passed out of it.” At his death and funeral, the agony of his misshapen retainer was unappeasable. He had to be removed by force from the door of the vault, and then he utterly refused to depart from the neighbourhood of the grave. He made himself another lair, near the churchyard wall, and there he sobbed away the brief remnant of his days, in honest and unavailing grief for the protector whom he had so loved in life, and from whom in death he would not be divided. Thus and there, not long after, he died, as the old men of the parish used to relate, for the “second and last time.” He had what is called in those parts a decent funeral, for his master had bequeathed to him an ample allowance for life and death in his last will. The mourners ate of the fat and drank of the strong, as their Celtic impulses would suggest; and although some among them, who remembered John’s former funeral, may have listened again for a token or sign, poor Black John, alas for him! had no master to come back to now, and declined “to bumpy” any more.

A singular and striking circumstance attended the final funeral of Black John. An aged crone, bent and tottering, “worn Nature’s mournful monument,” was observed following the bier, and the people heard her muttering ever and anon, “Oh, is he really dead? He came to life again once you know, and lived long after.” When assured that all indeed was over, even her wild hope, she cried with a great sob, “O poor dear Johnny! he was so good-looking and so steady till they spoilt him up at the Hall!” Her words recalled her to the memory of some old men who were there, and they knew her as a certain Aunty Bridget, who had been teased and worried, long years agone, at markets and fairs, as “Black John’s sweetheart.”

FOOTNOTES:

[55] From _All the Year Round_, vol. xiii. pp. 454-456. 1865.

[56] See Appendix C.

[57] Compare Hawker’s fine description of the feast at Dundagel in “The Quest of the Sangraal”--

“Strong men for meat, and warriors at the wine,
They wreak the wrath of hunger on the beeves,
They rend rich morsels from the savoury deer,
And quench the flagon like Brun-guillie dew!”

[58] Another version of the story says that he was a shoemaker come on business, and that he never made boots for Mr. Arscott again. For the fate of the other toad, see end of Appendix C.

[59] The Rev. Robert Martyn, then Vicar of Stratton.

[60] On another occasion Black John awoke from a less serious trance. The parson in his sermon was speaking of “that blessedness which on earth it is impossible to find,” when a well-known voice from the gallery shouted, “Not find! Us be sartain to find un to-morrow in Swannacott Wood!”

[61] In another version of the tale, Black John said to the preacher, “Only just take your hat off and say two words of gospel to ’im, and her won’t touch ’ee.”

[62] This is one stanza from Hawker’s own poem, “Tetcott, 1831; in which year Sir William Molesworth caused the old house to be taken down, and a new one built.” (See Appendix C.)

[63] These lines are from Hawker’s poem, “A Legend of the Hive.”

DANIEL GUMB’S ROCK[64]

There is no part of our native country of England so little known, no region so seldom trodden by the feet of the tourist or the traveller, as the middle moorland of old Cornwall. A stretch of wild heath and stunted gorse, dotted with swelling hills, and interspersed with rugged rocks, either of native granite or rough-hewn pillar, the rude memorial of ancient art, spreads from the Severn Sea on the west to the tall ridge of Carradon on the east, and from Warbstow Barrow on the north to the southern civilisation of Bodmin and Liskeard. Throughout this district there is, even in these days, but very scanty sign of settled habitation. Two or three recent and solitary roads traverse the boundaries; here and there the shafts and machinery of a mine announce the existence of underground life; a few clustered cottages, or huts, for the shepherds, are sprinkled along the waste; but the vast and uncultured surface of the soil is suggestive of the bleak steppes of Tartary or the far wilds of Australia, and that in the very heart of modern England. Yet is there no scenery that can be sought by the antiquary or the artist that will so kindle the imagination or requite the eye or the mind of the wanderer as this Cornish solitude. If he travel from our storied Dundagel, eastward, Rowter,[65] the Red Tor, so named from its purple tapestry of heather and heath, and Brunguillie,[66] the Golden Hill, crested with yellow gorse like a crown, will win his approach and reward, with their majestic horizon, the first efforts of his pilgrimage. The summits and sides of these mountains of the west are studded with many a logan-rock[67] or shuddering-stone of the old superstition. This was the pillar of ordeal in Druid times, so poised that while it shook at the slight faint touch of the innocent finger, it firmly withstood the assailing strength of the guilty man.

Passing onward, the traveller will pause amid a winding outline of unhewn granite pillars, and he will gradually discover that these are set up to represent the coils of a gigantic serpent, traced, as it were, in stone. This is a memorial of the dragon-crest of a Viking, or the demon-idol and shrine of an older antiquity. Not far off there gleams a moorland lake or mimic sea, with its rippling laugh of waters--the Dozmere Pool[68] of many an antique legend and tale, the mystic scene[69] of the shadowy vessel and the Mort d’Arthur of our living bard. A sheep-track--for no other visible path will render guidance along the moor--leads on to Kilmarth Tor, from the brow of which lofty crag the eye can embrace the expanse of the two seas which are the boundaries of Cornwall on the right and left. There, too, looms in the distance rocky Carradon, with the valley of the Hurlers at its foot. These tall shapes of granite, grim and grotesque, were once, as local legends say, nine bold upstanding Cornish men who disdained the Sabbath-day; and as they pursued their daring pastime and “put the stone” in spite of the warning of the priest, they were changed, by a sudden doom, where they stood up to play, and so were fixed for ever in monumental rock. Above them lowers the Devil’s Wring, a pile of granite masses, lifted, as though by giant or demon strength, one upon another; but the upper rocks vast and unwieldy, and the lower gradually lessening downward, until they rest, poised, on a pivot of stone so slender and small that it seems as though the wind sweeping over the moor would overtopple it with a breath; and yet centuries many and long have rolled over the heath, and still it stands unshaken and unswerved. Its name is derived from the similitude of the rocky structure to the press wherein the ancient housewives of rude Cornwall were accustomed to “wring” out the milk from their cheese.

Not far off from this singular monument of “ages long ago” there is found to this day a rough and rude assemblage of moorstone slabs, some cast down and others erect, but manifestly brought together and arranged by human hands and skill. There is still traceable amid the fragments the outline of a human habitation, once divided into cells, and this was the origin and purpose of this solitary abode. It was the work and the home of a remarkable man--an eccentric and original character among the worthies of the west--and the place has borne ever since the early years of the last century the name of Daniel Gumb’s Rock. He was a native Cornishman, born in a cottage that bordered on the moor, and in the lowlier ranks of labouring life. In his father’s household he was always accounted a strange and unsocial boy. In his childhood he kept aloof from all pastime and play, and while his companions resorted to their youthful amusements and sports, Daniel was usually seen alone with a book or a slate whereon he worked, at a very early age, the axioms of algebra or the diagrams of Euclid. He had mastered with marvellous rapidity all the books of the country-side, and he had even exhausted the instructions of the schoolmaster of the neighbouring town. Then it became his chosen delight to wander on the moors with some favourite volume in his hand, and a crust from his mother’s loaf in his bag; with his inseparable tools, also, the chisel and the mallet, wherewithal to chip and gather the geological specimens of his own district. Often he would be absent whole nights, and when he was questioned as to his place of shelter, he would reply, “Where John the Baptist slept,” or “At Roche, in the hermit’s bed;” for the ruined cell of a Christian anchorite stood, and yet stands, above the scenery of the wanderings of that solitary boy.

But Daniel’s principal ambition was to know and name the planets and the stars. It was at the time when the discoveries of foreign astronomers had peopled the heavens with fresh imagery, and our own Newton had given to the ethereal phenomena of the sky a “local habitation and a name.” It is very striking to discover when the minds of any nation are flooded with new ideas and original trains of thought, how soon the strange tidings will reach the very skirts of the population, and borne, how we know not, will thrill the hamlet and the village with the wonders that have roused and instructed the far-off and civilised city. Thus even Daniel’s distant district became aware of the novel science of the stars, and this intelligence failed not to excite and foster the faculties of his original mind. Local legends still record and identify the tall and craggy places where the youthful “scholar” was wont to ascend and to rest all night with his face turned upward to the sky, “learning the customs of the stars,” and “finding out by the planets things to come.” Nor were his studies unassisted and alone. A master-mind of those days, Cookworthy[70] of Plymouth, a learned and scientific man, still famous in the west, found out and fostered the genius of the intelligent youth. He gave him access to his library, and allowed him to visit his orrery and other scientific instruments; and the result of this kindness was shown in the tastes and future peculiarities of the mind of Gumb. The stern necessities of life demanded, in the course of time, that Daniel should fulfil the destiny of his birth, and win his bread by the sweat of his brow; for the meagre resources of his cottage-home had to be augmented by his youthful labour. In the choice of an occupation his early habits were not without their influence. He selected the craft of a hewer of stone, a very common calling on the surrounding moors; and there he toiled for several years of his succeeding life, amid the cyclopean models of the early ages. The pillared rocks of that wild domain were the monoliths of Celtic history, and the vast piles of the native moor were the heaped and unhewn pyramids of an ancient and nameless people. All these surrounding scenes acted on his tastes and impulses. “So the foundations of his mind were laid!” His father died, and Daniel became his own master, and had to hew his way through the rugged world by what the Cornish call “the pith of his bones.” That he did so his future history will attest; but it was not unsoothed nor alone; nor was it without the usual incident of human existence. No man ever yet became happily great or joyfully distinguished without that kindling strength, the affectionate presence of a woman.

“He who Joy would win,
Must share it: Happiness was born a twin.”

Such was the solace that arrived to soothe the dreary path of Daniel Gumb. He wooed and won a maiden of his native village, who, amid the rugged rocks and appellatives of Cornwall, had the soft Italian name of Florence. But where, amid the utter poverty of his position and prospects, could he find the peaceful and happy wedding-roof that should bend over him and his bride? His friends were few, and they too poor and lowly to aid his start in life. He himself had inherited nothing save a strong head and heart, and two stalwart hands. He looked around him and afar off, and there was no avenue for house or home. Suddenly he recalled to mind his wandering days and his houseless nights, the scanty food, the absorbing meditation, and the kindly shelter of many a nook in the hollow places of the granite rock. He formed his plan, and made it known to his future and faithful bride; she assented with the full-hearted strength and trusting sacrifice of a woman’s love. Then he went forth in the might of his simple and strong resolve,--his tools in his scrip, and a loaf or two of his accustomed household bread. He sought the well-known slope under Carradon, searched many a mass of Druid rock, and paced around cromlech and pillared stone of old memorial,[71] until he discovered a primeval assemblage of granite slabs suited to his toil. One of these, grounded upon several others, the vast boulders of some diluvian flood, had the rude semblance of a roof. Underneath this shelving rock he scooped away the soil, finding, as he dug on, more than one upright slice of moorstone, which he left to stand as an inner and natural wall. At last, at the end of a few laborious days, Daniel stood before a large cavern of the rocks, divided into chambers by upstanding granite, and sheltered at a steep angle by a mountainous mass of stone. Nerved and sustained by the hopeful visions which crowded on his mind, and of which he firmly trusted that this place would be the future scene, he toiled on until he had finally framed a giant abode such as that wherein Cyclops shut in Ulysses and his companions, and promised to “devour No-man the last.” Materials for the pavement and for closing up the inner walls were scattered abundantly around--nay, the very furniture for that mountain-home was at once ready for his hand; for as Agag,[72] king of the Amalekites, had his vaunted iron bed, so did Gumb frame and hew for himself and Florence, his wife, table and seat and a bedstead of native stone. Then he smoothed out and shot into a groove a thick and heavy door, so that, closed like an Eastern sepulchre, it demanded no common strength to roll away the stone. When all had been prepared, the bridegroom and the bride met at a distant church; the simple wedding-feast was held at her father’s house; and that night the husband led the maiden of his vows, the bride of his youth, to their wedding-rock! If he had known the ode, he might have chanted, in Horatian[73] verse, that day--

“Nunc scio quid sit amor, duris in cotibus illum”

“Now know I what true love is; in rugged dens he dwells.”

Here the wedded pair dwelt in peace long and happy years, mingling the imagery of old romance with the sterner duties of practical life. As a far-famed hewer of stone, the skill and energy of this singular man never lacked employ, nor failed to supply the necessities of his moorland abode. Like a patriarch in his tent amid the solitudes of Syria, he was his own king, prophet, and priest. He paid neither rent, nor taxes, nor tithe. When children were born to him, he exercised unwittingly the power of lay-baptism which was granted in the primitive Church to the inhabitants of a wilderness, afar from the ministry of the priesthood, and his wife was content to be “churched” by her own cherished husband, among the altars of unhewn stone that surrounded their solitary cell. Who shall say that this simple worship of the father and the mother with their household, amid the paradise of hills, was not as sweet, with the balsam of the soul, as the incense-breathing psalm of the cathedral choir? Rightly or wrongly, it is known that Daniel entertained an infinite contempt for “the parsons” whose territories bordered on the moor. Not one of them, it was his wont to aver, could cross the Asses’ Bridge of his favourite Euclid, a feat he had himself accomplished in very early youth; nor could the most learned among them all unravel the mysteries of his chosen companions, the wandering stars that travelled over Carradon every night. Long and frequent were his vigils for astronomical researches and delight. To this day the traveller will encounter on the face of some solitary rock a mathematical diagram carefully carved by some chisel and hand unknown; and while speculation has often been rife as to the Druidical origin of the mystic figure, or the scientific knowledge of the early Kelts, the local antiquary is aware that these are the simple records of the patient studies of Daniel Gumb.

When the writer of this article visited the neighbourhood in 183-, there still survived relics and remembrances of this singular man. There were a few written fragments[74] of his thoughts and studies still treasured up in the existing families of himself and his wife. Here is a transcript: “Mr. Cookworthy told me, when I saw him last, that astronomers in foreign parts, and our great man Sir Isaac here at home, had thought that the planets were so vast, and so like our earth in their ways, that they might have been inhabited by men; but he said, ‘their elements and atmosphere are thought to be unfit for human life and breath.’ But surely God would not have so wasted His worlds as to have made such great bright masses of His creation to roll along all barren, as it were, like desert places of light in the sky. There must be people of some kind there: how I should like to see them, and to go there when I die!”

Another entry on the same leaf: “Florence asked me to-day if I thought that our souls, after we are dead, would know the stars and other wise things better than we can now. And I answered her, Yes; and if I could--that is, if I was allowed to--the first thing I would try should be to square the circle true, and then, if I could, I would mark it and work it out somewhere hereabouts on a flat rock, that my son might find it there, and so make his fortune and be a great man. N.B.--Florence asked me to write this down.”

On a thick sheet of pasteboard, with a ground-plan of a building on the other side, he had written: “_January 16, 1756_.--A terrible storm last night. Thunder and lightning and hail, with a tempest of wind. Saw several dead sheep on the moor. Shipwrecks, no doubt, at sea. A thought came into my mind, Why should such harm be allowed to be done? I read some reasons once in a book that Mr. Cookworthy lent me, called ‘The Origin of Evil;’ but I could not understand a word of it. My notion is, that when evil somehow came into the world, God did not destroy it at once, because He is so almighty that He let it go on, to make manifest His power and majesty; and so He rules over all things, and turns them into good at the last. N.B.--The devil is called in the Bible the Prince of the Powers of the Air: so he may be, but he must obey his Master. The poor wretch is but a slave after all!”